


Heart of Glass, Mind of Stone

by followinglilies, reysrose



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: "I hate sand" ~ Anakin Skywalker, Army Medic Niylah, Basketball, Brain Damage, Chronic Pain, Deserts, Disability, F/F, Falling In Love, IEDS, Marine Octavia, Military AU, Minor Injuries, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Seizures, Semi Public Sex, migraines
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-14 18:53:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15395217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/followinglilies/pseuds/followinglilies, https://archiveofourown.org/users/reysrose/pseuds/reysrose
Summary: Octavia Blake is tough as nails, accident prone, and beautiful, and it doesn’t take Niylah long at all to fall head over heels for the Marine that keeps showing up with cuts and bruises. The relationship blossoms fast and heavy, fueled by fear and lust and desert heat. Three months before Niylah’s commission is up, Octavia’s unit is involved in a roadside bombing. Octavia suffers, alongside other catastrophic wounds, a traumatic brain injury. Their attempts to navigate two months of separation, Octavia’s permanent brain damage, and the adjustment to civilian life, are messy, chaotic, and painful.Niylah wouldn’t have it any other way.





	1. Bad Days

Octavia feels… off center. 

She has bad days. She will always have bad days, because there’s little spots of dark on an MRI of her brain somewhere that mean she will always have bad days. But that doesn’t make them any less frustrating or hard to deal with. 

The city is too loud, and her ears ring even through her headphones. Her leg and hip hurt, and her brain feels funny and disconnected from her limbs, so she’s limping towards the subway and clinging to her rollator with white knuckles because she definitely did not fall in the living room earlier. She just needs to get to class. She just needs to get on the subway, take her test, and get home before her body goes completely offline on her. 

Octavia can taste metal, and there’s a haze over the left right corner of her peripheral vision that she knows isn’t brain damage. An aura. Metal precedes both migraines and seizures, but hazy spots in her vision are strictly migraine based. 

Migraines, she can deal with. There’s Imitrex bumping along in her backpack. If she has to, she can stab herself in the thigh right before the test and power through, then call an uber before the extreme exhaustion hits. 

Seizures, on the other hand. Octavia feels her eye twitch. She hates having seizures in public, hates having them anywhere but in the apartment. Even when she’s alone, they’re preferable to having them on the streets of New York. She’s busted her chin on enough ancient cobblestones to know. 

The migraine starts with a stabbing pain right through her left eye as she sits on the subway, reviewing her notes one last time. She twists her daith. It’s in her right ear, because she used to get them on the right side, but once she got her daith pierced, she started to get them on the left side. Cosmic retribution for trying to cheat her own melty brain. She digs through her backpack, ignoring the wave of bile that lodges itself in her throat. Her vision fuzzes. She grits her teeth, digs out her medicine, and shoves it into her legging covered thigh. 

Her notes come back into focus after that, and she calls Indra when she stumbles from the subway to the street, her head spinning.

“Forrest.”

“Hey.”

“Octavia? What is it?”

“My test- it finishes when you go on lunch. Can you maybe come pick me up?”

“What’s wrong with the subway?”

A wave of nausea slams into her. Octavia grips the rubber of her rollator so hard her nails leave grooves, bends in on herself, and keeps walking. She’s going to be late.

“Mi-migraine. I had to take Imitrex, and I don’t want to take the subway half asleep.”

“Text me when you’re done. Someone will come get you and take you home, hopefully me or Kane.”

“Thanks. Ow. Fuck.” 

“And Octavia?”

“Yeah?”

“Good luck.” 

~

The metal taste in her mouth comes back halfway through her test. Octavia wants to groan, to cry, to scream about how unfair everything is. 

Instead, she keeps doing math.

She’s on question 23 of 30 when her right arm goes dead. One’s coming, and soon. She grimaces, adjusts her sunglasses, and raises a hand. The professor takes his sweet time coming over, and the metal in her mouth only gets stronger. 

“I need to use the restroom.”

“Go ahead. Give me your paper until you return.” 

She practically shoves it into his hands, grabs her backpack with her left arm, and stumbles jerkily to the gender neutral bathroom at the end of the hall. It’s a single, and she can lay down, get her head on her sweatshirt, and have a grand mal seizure without being interrupted. Small victories. 

She barely makes it. The last thing she manages to do before her awareness leaves her is get her head on something soft, and then her world turns into static. 

It takes her a long time to fully come around. She’s awake, but not committed to it, and she can barely move. She definitely peed herself. She still has a migraine. She really doesn’t want to change clothes and go to do more math. 

Octavia hauls herself up, changes her pants, throws up in the sink, and goes back to class. She’s the last person done with the exam, and by the time she shuffles to the curb, barely upright and her walker doing almost all the work, Indra has been waiting for her for 10 minutes. 

“You look awful.”

“Th-Thanks.”

She pulls a face at her mentor as Indra loads the rollator into the trunk of her car and then helps Octavia into the front seat. 

“Did you seize? You have that greyish look you get after a seizure.”

“Yep. Made it to the bathroom at least. Didn’t even bite my tongue.” 

“Good.”

Octavia lolls her head on the leather seat. New York traffic is a nightmare, but the subway would be worse in her state. She’s so drowsy, and her stomach rolls and pitches. 

“What time is Niylah off?”

Octavia shrugs and focuses on not getting sick. Indra chuckles, smooths her hair as they wait at a red light. 

Octavia has bad days. She will always have bad days. But at least she doesn’t have to deal with them alone.


	2. Teddy Bears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note to begin: A PICC line is a peripherally inserted catheter that provides continuous IV access without having to use an IV cannula or veins. If a patient will require constant IV access for a long time, like Octavia does after she's injured, doctors will often place a PICC or other sort of permanent line in order to avoid blown veins and a buildup of scar tissue around veins so the patient doesn't completely lose venous access during their stay/experience problems with their veins later on. 
> 
> Come bother me @reysxrose on Tumblr

“Say I love you, O.”

His sister blinks up at him from behind her new glasses, her eyes obscured partially by smudges. She reaches up with her good hand and pats at the lenses, lips screwing up in confusion. She’s got an odd obsession with touching her glasses. The doctor thinks that once her brain is less swollen and she’s doing better in terms of comprehension, she’ll stop playing with them, but until then, Bellamy has resigned himself to cleaning his sister’s fingerprints off her brand new, very thick, and very expensive glasses with his shirt every ten seconds. 

“Don’t touch those. We talked about that, remember? No touching our glasses. Say I love you. Right in here.” 

Octavia whines when he pulls her fingers away from the lenses and then wipes the smears off them. She squeezes her eyes tight and then pops them open, as though she can force herself to see clearly. He places the frames on her nose again and then holds out the tiny plastic recording device. She relaxes visibly, her eyelids drooping. 

“Octavia, your therapist will be here in 10 minutes and she’ll just wake you up.”

“Noooooo.” 

He presses a kiss to his sister’s bruised temple. As her brain continues to shrink back to normal size, she improves, but she’s still constantly exhausted, confused, and unfocused. She’s easily distracted, and has trouble understanding commands. Her aphasia has improved significantly since she first woke up, but she’s still not talking as much as she usually does and she’s having trouble communicating her emotions without physical displays. 

Octavia starts to fiddle with the dressing over her PICC line, her mouth dropping open as she gets a fingernail under the peeling plasticine bandage. 

“Hey. No.”

She blows air out her nose angrily, reaching out her hand and making a squeezing motion. Bellamy places the putty one of her many therapists gave them in his sister’s hand. She starts to pick at it, her palm contracting over and over. 

“O, I need you to say I love you.”

She shakes her head. The putty has her undivided attention, now. Bellamy pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. 

“It’s for Niylah. Remember? Think hard. Do you remember me telling you we were going to make Niylah a teddy bear?”  
Octavia nods.

“Wan’ water.”

“Do you actually remember or are you just nodding so I’ll shut up?”

He pours her a glass of water and helps her hold it, taking away the putty. Her arm shakes. He puts a hand behind her elbow and grips it, making sure to support her. Octavia sips from the straw slowly, staring at him. 

“ I ‘member.”

“What kind of bear, O?”

His sister shrugs and then winces, looking up at him with wide, wet eyes. He strokes her cheek. 

“What kind?”

“The- um. Puppy. Yeah.” 

“Good. What color?” 

“Purple. ‘S my favorite color, Bell.” 

“Good. See? You remembered.” 

Octavia smiles, lopsided. She’d woken up with hemiplegia in her right side, but it was fast fading. Her face was still a little droopy, but she could move her limbs fine. Bellamy thanks a god he hasn’t prayed to in years every day that the partial paralysis wasn’t permanent. 

“Ok, so, what else do you remember about the bear, O?”

“Talks.” 

“Yeah. Do you remember how it’s going to talk to her?”

His sister’s face lights up and then she rolls her heavy eyes, tugging at his wrist and pulling the recording device towards her face. She looks exasperated, a scowl on her face. 

“Button, Bell.”

He grins at her, and presses the button.  
“Love you, Niy! So so so much.” 

He releases the button. Octavia looks ridiculously proud of herself, and he has to say that he’s proud of her too. She’s making more and more connections in her head with only minimal prompting. 

“I did it.” 

“You did.” 

The good day ends pretty fast once the therapist gets there. Octavia is uncooperative and irritable, and is in tears after ten minutes. Bellamy does what he can to soothe her, stroking her hair as she works through her exercises. 

She works herself up so much during one of the memory exercises that she seizes, a full grand mal that lasts for just over a minute and leaves her vacant, shaking, and retching miserably. Therapy ends early after that. 

“Shower.”

“O..”

“NOW!”

And then she’s hysterical again, hiccuping on sobs and flinging herself into his arms. He rubs her sweaty back, small circles that expand outward before curling back in, just like he did when she was little.

“Raven’s almost done with her conference call, sweetheart. She’ll get you cleaned up. Shhhh, O, shhhh. You have to calm down before you seize again.” 

Octavia continues to weep until she falls asleep, balled in his arms like a baby. Bellamy swallows back his own tears, keeps rubbing his sister’s thin, trembling back, and tries to remember that at least some of this is temporary.

It doesn’t work. 

~

Octavia is clean and sleeping peacefully when Niylah comes back from running errands, slipping into the dim room near silently and startling both Bellamy and Raven, who are watching Stranger Things on Bellamy’s laptop.

“Shit, fuck-Niylah!”

His sister’s girlfriend smirks, one hand clutching a plastic bag.

“Is that-”

“Yep.”

He sighs, thankful that finally, they’ll have something good to comfort Octavia with.

“They had these scent pad things, so I got one that kind of smelled like my perfume. It’s in the face.”

“That was good thinking.”

Niylah slides onto Octavia’s bed, and O shifts and stirs with a tiny whimper, her eyes opening halfway. She’d had a second seizure, so she’d been given her rescue meds and immediately passed out from the side effects. He can see from her eyes and body language that the medicine hasn’t entirely worn off yet. She’s slow and heavy when she curls into Niylah’s warmth and lifts her head to push her forehead against Niylah’s thigh, and she doesn’t say a word, just makes a small cooing noise.

“Hi, baby.”

Octavia slurs something indecipherable back and tries to sit herself up. Niylah lifts her and places her into her lap, covering her with the heavy hospital blankets and the fuzzy one Bellamy and Raven had brought her from home. 

“Did you have a good day?”

Octavia shakes her head against Niylah’s collarbone miserably, her eyes tearing. 

“Why was it bad?”

“Sei- uh- those things-”

“You had seizures?”

“Uh huh.”

“How many? Do you remember.”

“Two. Head hurts. Threw up, too.”   
“Oh, my sweet girl. I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

His sister’s head droops. 

“S’okay. Don’ feel good, Niy.”

“I have a present for you.”

“Present?”

“Yeah. But only if you eat your dinner.” 

Octavia scowls again, her fingers plucking at Niylah’s shirt sleeve and then rubbing at her glasses. Niylah gently laces their fingers and wipes the fresh smudges from the lenses. 

“But-”

“No buts. If you don’t eat, no present.” 

Octavia struggles through her food valiantly, scooping mac and cheese into her mouth with a weak hand and letting Niylah cut an apple into pieces for her. She doesn’t finish it, she never finishes it all, but she makes more of an effort than she’s made since she regained consciousness and they removed the nasogastric tube once the hemiplegia let up enough that she could swallow safely. 

“We should bribe you more often, O.” 

His sister smiles around the straw in her mouth, her head on Niylah’s shoulder as she finishes her protein drink. 

“Present?”

“Yes. Present.” 

The bear is adorable. It’s got a rainbow pattern on it, and Octavia’s name on the paw. O’s mouth drops open and she reaches for it, cuddling it to her chest. She’s smiling bigger than she has since she woke up, the gap where the blast knocked out a few teeth clearly visible. She hates that gap, has done everything in her power to hide it since she found out about it, but she’s so enamored by her bear that she’s forgotten to be self conscious.

“Squeeze the paw, O.”

Niylah’s soft, lilting voice echoes from the confines of the stuffed animal. Octavia bursts into tears, clinging to the bear and to her girlfriend desperately, hiding her face in Niylah’s neck.

“Thank you thank you thank you.” 

Bellamy smiles, near tears himself. Raven rests her head on his shoulder, squeezing his thigh. There are silvery tears in her hairline. 

Maybe everything will be ok.


	3. Base

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is set before Octavia's injury when both she and Niylah were still on base

The first time Octavia attempted to ask Niylah out wasn’t much of a story at all. It was over almost before it started. She spotted the long blonde braid from across the mess hall. Octavia had a white knuckle grip on her tray as she crossed the tiled floor to Niylah’s table. She kept her eyes on Niylah’s pink lips as they flowed open and closed with a conversation she was too har away to hear. She practiced what she was going to say in her head over and over again. She was less than five feet away when she tripped on a fatigue-clad leg and went crashing to the floor. The splattered sandwich that covered the front of her shirt stopped her from continuing with her plan.

The second, third, fourth, and fifth times were equally as pitiful. You would think that five failed attempts to ask someone out would be enough to discourage even the most persistent. But Octavia Blake’s determination went beyond simple persistence. She was dead set on getting at least one date with Niylah. 

The next opportunity came when she landed her ass in medical. Her leg had been aching for months but she had been ignoring it ever since it was just a slight twinge. Growing up, she had never wanted to go to the doctor and she was no different as an adult. However, she wasn’t dumb enough to argue with a superior officer who caught her limping and lagging behind during exercises. A certain beautiful medic also might have made her a bit more willing. 

So she sat waiting for examination, her good leg tucked underneath her and the other swinging off the exam table. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror hung on the opposite wall. Her hair was pulled up haphazardly and dark strands fell around her neck. There were dark circles under her eyes from a permanently fucked up sleep schedule. She luckily didn’t have much time to process her shabby appearance because the door to the exam room swung open. 

“Alright Blake, what are you in for this time?” Niylah smiled at her as she looked up from her chart. Octavia’s heart started pounding and her palms got all sweaty. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. She had always thought herself to be pretty good at flirting. Or at least, she was usually less of a nervous wreck. 

“My leg. It hurts.” Smooth. Real smooth.

“Well, let’s take a look.” Niylah slid the roller chair across the floor until she was inches away. When she placed a hand on her leg Octavia winced in pain. But even still, Niylah’s thin fingers felt good on her skin. 

Octavia spent almost the entire examination sitting like an idiot. She had thought of so may things to say beforehand but now that she was in the moment it took all her nerve to answer Niylah’s simple medical questions. The few minutes it took to check her leg seemed to stretch on for hours. 

“Well, it seems like shin splints to me. But we better get an X-ray to rule out the possibility of a stress fracture.” Niylah pushed her chair away again and Octavia exhaled deeply.

Octavia couldn’t do anything but nod. 

“I’ll send someone in to take you to X-Ray. Take care,” all of a sudden Niylah’s hand was on the knob and she was turning to leave the room.

“Wait!” Octavia yelled too loud. She launched herself off the table and tried to stifle a whimper as she landed on her bad leg.

“Are you alright?” Niylah asked while rushing back to her.

“Oh yeah, I’m good,” Octavia attempted to regain her composure, running a shaky hand over hair. 

“It’s just, I wanted to ask you something,” Octavia stammered. She was not leaving this room with another failure to add to her list.

“Ask away,” Niylah cocked her eyebrow curiously.

“I was wondering if maybe...you would want to see me again sometime.”

“Well with your injury track record, I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again soon,” Niylah laughed but panic surged in Octavia’s veins. She picked nervously at her cuticles and avoided eye contact at all cost. Oh god, this was not going to end well.

“No I meant like, meet up. Outside of medical. You know, get to know each other more,” there was no use in giving up now. No matter how badly she wanted to.

“I mean, I already know a lot about you. Family history, allergies, previous conditions,” Niylah held up the clipboard with Octavia’s chart attached. Niylah’s wide eyes were full of confusion.

“Fuck. Niylah, I’m trying to ask you on a date,” Octavia spat. She looked down right after she said it. She picked away at her cuticles and did everything she could to avoid eye contact. Then she heard a strange sound from above her. Was Niylah...laughing?

“Octavia, I know,” Niylah giggled. The confusion in her eyes was replaced with a mischievous glint and she smirked playfully at Octavia.

“Wait, what?”

“I was teasing you,” she reached out and squeezed Octavia’s shoulder, “I had to give you a little hell after how much time you spent dragging your feet. I’ve been waiting months for you to ask me.”

“What?!” Octavia nearly choked, “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“Because, you seemed to have a plan and I didn’t want to get in the way of things. But now that you finally asked, how about this friday?”

Octavia was too baffled to respond. She couldn’t believe it. She had spent the last few months acting like a damn fool and Niylah had just been enjoying the show. Normally she would be pissed, furious even. But as she stared at Niylah’s lingering smirk she wanted nothing more than to kiss those lips. 

“So it’s a date?” Niylah asked, her expression softening into a warm smile.

“It’s a date.”


	4. Thanksgiving

Octavia comes with her mom to pick them up at the airport, and Clarke, who hasn’t seen her since about three weeks after her release from the hospital, feels her stomach turn to stone. 

Her baby sister is half asleep on the bench near baggage claim, pale, too thin, and trembling. A push wheelchair sits next to her, a backpack in its seat. Abby has an arm around her, rubbing her shoulder with fingers Clarke knows are long and calloused and cool. Lexa reaches for her hand, squeezes it. 

“She looks awful.”

“Maybe it’s just a bad day, Clarke.” 

“I don’t- Lexa, she looks worse than she did in the hospital-”

“Clarke. Calm down.”

Abby sees them before Octavia does, nudging the younger woman gently and pressing a kiss to the top of her head. Octavia shifts in the seat like she wants to stand, but it’s too much effort and she goes back to resting against Abby’s side, her head pressed to the crook of her neck. Clarke swallows down a lump of fear. Octavia has never been that still, that weak, not even when she was seven and had the flu for two weeks. 

“Hi, baby!”

Her mother stands up, still mostly holding Octavia, and extends her free arm. Octavia’s cloudy green eyes blink open and she shifts from Abby’s side to Clarke’s, slumping into her grip. Her sister’s spine stands out, rigid and prominent under her sweater. 

“Oh, it’s so good to see you! Lexa, come here, let me look at you.” 

Her mother is acting too normal, a forced normal. Octavia whimpers and Clarke barely has time to react before her sister’s left leg gives out. Clarke eases her into a chair, holding onto Octavia’s hand. 

“Let’s get our bags and go home, hmm? Everyone’s excited to see you both!” 

There’s a blanket in the car and Octavia tugs it over herself immediately, burying her face into it and falling asleep within seconds. Lexa strokes her hair absently, scrolling through her phone. 

“Mom-”

“I think Raven is making that cake you like for Thanksgiving dinner-”  
“Mom-”

“And Bellamy finished grading early, so we’re all pretty much free-”

“Mom!”

“What?”

“Octavia. She looks so sick, Mom, what the hell is going on?”

“Seizures. Her medication isn’t controlling them, and we’re having to give her rescue meds pretty much around the clock just to keep her out of the hospital. Her neurologist wants to admit her after the holiday until we can get them under control, but she’s fighting it, desperate not to go in.”

“She needs to! Look at her!”

“Clarke, you haven’t been here. It’s been-”

A stab of guilt, straight to her kidneys. Clarke swallows, turns around, and looks long and hard at her sister, who’s cuddled closer to Lexa in her sleep. She looks 12 again, on a long road trip, in the back of the old minivan. Maybe it’s just because she’s so thin. 

“I know I haven’t.”

But maybe she needs to be. 

They go out to dinner, like they always do on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Octavia is coming out of haze from the medication, and she’s even cracking shitty jokes like she normally does, flirting with Niylah, stealing fries off Clarke’s plate. She’s almost like the old Octavia, until it happens. 

Her sister is mid sentence when she stops, head bobbing, and then throws up onto her plate before beginning to shake apart at the joints. Around her, her family becomes a well oiled machine. Bellamy scoops Octavia’s seizing body up and gets her on the floor, laying her head in his lap. Niylah begins to time the seizure on her phone, and her mom takes out Octavia’s rescue medicine, tugs up her sister’s dress, wipes a spot on her thigh with an alcohol wipe, and sticks it in her leg like an epi pen. 

Everyone around them is staring, murmuring. There’s a woman watching the proceedings with open disgust, which Clarke understands given the fact that Octavia puked up barely digested food onto the table, but it still makes her bristle. 

“Clarke, go get the car please? Lexa, go find someone for the check. Hurry, please.” 

Octavia comes around slow, eyes blinking dizzily, bloody drool trailing from her open mouth, and then she begins to sob frantically. Raven steps in, then, cradling Octavia’s upper torso and head and cooing to her gently, a song in Spanish that’s beyond the range of what Clarke learned in 101. It helps, apparently, because it edges Octavia back from the panic attack and into quiet crying. 

Clarke leaves to get the car, and barely makes it out the door before she’s crying herself.

Octavia sleeps most of Thursday, cuddling with whoever has a second to lay down on the couch with her. Clarke takes a shift, letting her baby sister curl into her lap, clinging to the rainbow teddy bear Niylah had gotten her while she was still in the hospital. 

“Clarke?”

Octavia’s voice is slurred, the two back to back absence seizures she’d had at breakfast warranting another dose of rescue meds and the nausea, vomiting, and dizziness that come with the drug. Clarke presses a kiss to Octavia’s silky hair and stops flipping channels, pausing on a Star Wars marathon. Octavia perks up slightly.

“Yeah?”

“Miss you.”

“I’m right here, O.”

Her sister’s hand curls into the front of Clarke’s hoodie. The Death Star explodes on the TV screen.

“When you’re- no-”

“When I’m at home?”

“Uh huh.” 

Octavia sniffles and then gags. Clarke holds the trash can and rubs her back as she gets sick, again, from the meds. It barely phases her, and she rinses her mouth out and then goes back to getting as close to Clarke as possible. 

“We gotta get dressed for dinner later, O.” 

Octavia shakes her head, pouting up at Clarke with those wide eyes that always got her her way when she was little.

“It doesn’t have to be fancy, ‘Tavia.”

“Mmmph.”

Raven is out making a booze run, and Niylah, who makes the best pies Clarke has ever tasted, is elbow deep in flour, butter, and the inside of a baking pumpkin, so changing Octavia into clothes she can wear out of the house falls to Clarke and Lexa. Octavia’s legs are jello from the meds and the fact that she’s dehydrated, but Lexa picks her up like she weighs nothing and carries Clarke’s former Marine of a baby sister up the stairs as easily as she carries their cat. Octavia is uncooperative, shoving her face in the blanket and still clinging to her teddy bear. 

“Dress or pants?”

“Mmph.”

“O-”

“Dress or pants?”

Octavia sniffles, coughs, and then tears begin to roll down her grey cheeks, soaking into her hair and her blanket and her bear, when she buries her face into its soft stomach and her tears turn into big, hitching sobs. Lexa lays down on the bed and draws Octavia into her arms, rubbing her back and whispering to her, and Clarke stands, stock still, hand still on the closet door. 

She can’t fix this. She can’t fix her baby sister and can’t make her stop crying, stop seizing, stop existing with brain damage that turns her into something Octavia has fought so hard not to be-

“Clarke.”

“Hmm?”

“She said leggings and a tunic top. The cranberry one.”

Octavia is still curled up, clutching her teddy bear and wrapped in a blanket, but there are no new tears on her cheeks. Clarke pulls out the clothes, kisses her baby sister’s head, and makes up her mind. 

~

“We need to come back to New York.”

Lexa shifts beneath the blankets, tucking Clarke under her arm and pressing a kiss to her head before sighing.

“Clarke…”

“Lexa, she’s so sick. I need to- she needs me, and I-”

“Clarke, this isn’t a spur of the moment thing-”

“I need to do this! I need to be here for her, be with her-”

“She’s not dying, Clarke-”

Clarke chokes on a sob and then she’s hyperventilating, clutching at Lexa’s tank top.

“Baby, baby, what is it?”

“She al-almost DID and I couldn’t- we didn’t-”

“Shhhh, shhhhh, shhhh.”

“I- I- my baby SISTER-”

“Hush, shhhh, sweetheart.”

“We-we-we need to-”

“Okay, Clarke. Okay.” 

~

They move in February, once Lexa has a new job and Clarke gets her residency moved to a hospital in the city. They’re 20 minutes from Bellamy and Raven and 10 from her parents, and thus Octavia and Niylah. 

Octavia is better but not good, and the first thing they do is get the couch in the apartment so she can lay down on it. She’s on her back right now, dicking around on her phone and making bad puns. Clarke kicks her good foot gently as she walks past, laughs when her sister flips her off.   
She knows that being close and being there to support isn’t going to fix every problem her sister’s injury has caused, but it makes her feel less like a shitty sister. It’s selfish, but it’s the good kind of selfish.

“I’m off Monday, O, do you want me to take you to the neuro?”

“Yes, second mom. Jesus, you people do know I can ride the subway, right?” 

“Don’t be a dick, Octavia!”

“Speak for yourself!”


End file.
